lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Like I said, the first batch of edits looked more like attempts to remove sections which corroborated Palin's story (about him being captured and warning the British not to go to Lexington because the Colonists were ready for them).
Just to add: Palin didn't say anything about Revere being captured, so that section being removed would actually be
for Palin, not
against.
She didn't say he wasn't captured. Unless you buy that she thought that Revere was riding through loyalist towns warning of a colonial uprising, it's reasonable to assume that she knew he'd been captured and that's how he "warned the British". Um... But the first edits on June 5th (which removed that reference btw and a whole bunch of other stuff for being not properly cited) were made by
this user. He's not a conservative. He self identifies as a Democrat.
I can't say that his edits were politically motivated, but it's certain that edits were made by people who were *not* Palin supporters and not in response to Palin supporters making edits first. Get it? It's a media fabrication which you bought because you didn't bother (or want) to spend any time learning
the truth.
Nearly
12 hours later on June 5th comes the first edit one might possibly think is from a Palin supporter. It's by
this guy. Now maybe he's lying about his support/love/whatever for Palin. But I've looked at the edit delta. He didn't place any credence on Palin's account. He simply made reference to her claim in the section on Revere's ride. And honestly did so in a fairly condescending manner:
Quote:
Accounts differ regarding the method of alerting the colonists; the generally accepted position is that the warnings were verbal in nature, although one disputed account suggested that Revere rang
bells during his ride.<ref name=twsX34aa>{{cite web
This is followed by a link to the LA Times article about this. Not sure why he felt like putting that information in that section. Maybe he's a flake? But this is hardly a horde of Palin supporters descending on the wiki to re-write history.
His second attempt to insert a Palin reference into the Revere page is particularly "not-supportive":
Quote:
The generally accepted position is that the warnings were verbal in nature, although U.S. politician and former presidential candidate
Sarah Palin in an interview suggested that the warnings were accomplished using
bells; her remark was widely seen as a
gaffe and not accepted by historians or the news media.<ref name=twsX34aa>{{cite web
Yeah. Ringing endorsement of Palin's account there. This is precisely what I would expect a rabid Palin supporter to write if given access to edit the wiki account of Revere's ride. Um... no, it's really not.
Quote:
Like I said, what she probably did was smooshed the two events together (him being captured by the British and him riding through towns warning Colonists) because she was tired of walking all day and having questions thrown at her. To me it looks like an innocent slip, honestly. Not exactly wrong, but still not right either. A gaffe that could EASILY be brushed off as fatigue.
Lol. Except for a left leaning media looking for any excuse to play on the "Palin is dumb!" angle. Seriously? What do you think everyone's doing here? Seems like folks are trying to find anything at all to hang around her neck.
Quote:
The fanbase, however, got the Revere paged locked, which goes to show just how ravenous they were to protect their queen.
Wikipedia pages get locked all the time. Mostly because the editors have egos the size of freaking Texas. Look through the edit history. It's not about Palin supporters. It's about one guy (the first guy I linked, who is *not* a Palin supporter), hearing there was a story about the history of Revere's ride going around, and deciding to make some edits. Other people also decide to do edits, likely for the same reason. He then rampages through, arguing with everyone who makes any sort of edit he doesn't like and calling them Palin supporters, no matter how unrelated their edits are.
The first thing you also have to realize is that the Revere wiki page
was already locked prior to Palin making her statement. It was restricted to accepted editors only. This was not random Palin supporters showing up and changing stuff, and if you read through the edit history, it's obvious that it's mostly about 3 or 4 people arguing primarily over format, citation rules, and sentence structure. Um... So pretty much a normal wikipedia argument. Happens all the time. The media just doesn't normally comment on it.
The page got edited so much, not because anyone was trying to re-write history, but because people think to make wiki edits on a subject when said subject comes up for some reason. Like say when a politician says something about it, and the media makes a big deal about it. There's literally nothing to see there.
Quote:
To wit: Her fanbase makes her look bad.
No. One or two liberals made a big deal out of nothing in order to make it appear as though her fanbase did something they didn't, so that they could say that this made her look bad. And you, and a ton of other people ate it up as fact without bothering to check. Almost certainly because the false information fit with your pre-conceived perception.
Edited, Jun 17th 2011 8:03pm by gbaji